California Restaurant Association

Head-Turning Gimmick: The California Restaurant Assn. will use a giant "upside-down chef" to send a message to President Clinton. Attendees at the CRA's Southern California Foodservice Exposition at the Anaheim Convention Center on March 20 and 21 will write their opinion of Clinton's health care plan on a giant figure of an upside-down chef.

Head-Turning Gimmick: The California Restaurant Assn. will use a giant "upside-down chef" to send a message to President Clinton. Attendees at the CRA's Southern California Foodservice Exposition at the Anaheim Convention Center on March 20 and 21 will write their opinion of Clinton's health care plan on a giant figure of an upside-down chef.

They Don't Cater to Kids: The California Restaurant Assn. doesn't say what will happen to violators, but a recent press release makes very clear that youngsters won't be welcome at the organization's upcoming Southern Counties Foodservice Expo that opens April 18 in San Diego. "No one under 16 years of age, including infants in strollers or backpacks, will be admitted under any circumstances," the press release says.

Michael Rhodes, 34, entered the restaurant business at age 16 as a cook. He managed his first restaurant at 19 and worked for a Los Angeles-based chain before founding Orange-based Frontier Restaurants Inc., which owns eight Russell's Famous Hamburgers locations and five Knollwood family restaurants. Another Knollwood is scheduled to open early in 1994. In May, Rhodes was elected president of the Orange County chapter of the California Restaurant Assn.

In his starched white chef's hat and jacket, Pierre Pelech fretted over renewed talk about banning all cigarette smoking in restaurants in Los Angeles. "It would be catastrophic for the restaurant business," said Pelech, co-owner of Pierre's restaurant in Los Feliz. "There would be a drop in business, and that would put people out of work." A raspy voice from the restaurant bar added: "I don't mind cigarette smoke."

For years, proposals to ban smoking in public places have incensed the California Restaurant Assn. Then, this summer, the 3,000-member trade group came out with a surprise announcement: It would support a ban on smoking in all public places. But there was a catch: The support would come only if "such regulation is rendered on a statewide basis."

Michael Rhodes, 34, entered the restaurant business at age 16 as a cook. He managed his first restaurant at 19 and worked for a Los Angeles-based chain before founding Orange-based Frontier Restaurants Inc., which owns eight Russell's Famous Hamburgers locations and five Knollwood family restaurants. Another Knollwood is scheduled to open early in 1994. In May, Rhodes was elected president of the Orange County chapter of the California Restaurant Assn.

In what it says is a significant change of heart and not a change in tactics, the California Restaurant Assn. declared Tuesday that it would support an outright, statewide smoking ban in restaurants--but only if smoking is also banned in all other public places. The organization, representing owners of about 10,000 restaurants, said its decision is largely an acknowledgment of new data on the risks of secondhand smoke.

And the Lifetime Achievement award goes to...Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. That would be the Elizabeth Burns Lifetime Achievement Award, to be exact, presented by the Los Angeles chapter of the California Restaurant Association at Hotel Casa del Mar on June 7th. Some 30 years ago Feniger and Milliken were the new kids on the block, cooking from a small storefront on Melrose Avenue next to the L.A. Eyeworks store. The two young cooks met in a tough French kitchen in Chicago at a time when a woman in a professional kitchen was still a rarity - and in a French kitchen practically unheard of. But the two stuck it out, formed a friendship and eventually ended up in Los Angeles.

The Cheesecake Factory, a Calabasas-based restaurant chain and bakery known for its stylish and high volume restaurants, plans a $35-million stock offering to raise cash for the company to expand. But the initial public stock offering by the 20-year-old company will enrich its owners nearly as much as it will provide the company capital for expansion. Almost half of the net proceeds from the stock offering are set to go to current owners--including $13.

They Don't Cater to Kids: The California Restaurant Assn. doesn't say what will happen to violators, but a recent press release makes very clear that youngsters won't be welcome at the organization's upcoming Southern Counties Foodservice Expo that opens April 18 in San Diego. "No one under 16 years of age, including infants in strollers or backpacks, will be admitted under any circumstances," the press release says.

In his starched white chef's hat and jacket, Pierre Pelech fretted over renewed talk about banning all cigarette smoking in restaurants in Los Angeles. "It would be catastrophic for the restaurant business," said Pelech, co-owner of Pierre's restaurant in Los Feliz. "There would be a drop in business, and that would put people out of work." A raspy voice from the restaurant bar added: "I don't mind cigarette smoke."

For years, proposals to ban smoking in public places have incensed the California Restaurant Assn. Then, this summer, the 3,000-member trade group came out with a surprise announcement: It would support a ban on smoking in all public places. But there was a catch: The support would come only if "such regulation is rendered on a statewide basis."

In what it says is a significant change of heart and not a change in tactics, the California Restaurant Assn. declared Tuesday that it would support an outright, statewide smoking ban in restaurants--but only if smoking is also banned in all other public places. The organization, representing owners of about 10,000 restaurants, said its decision is largely an acknowledgment of new data on the risks of secondhand smoke.

October 30, 1986 | JOHN MILLRANY, Millrany is a Mission Hills free-lance writer

The couple drove up in their brand new Volvo to an elegant French restaurant on Ventura Boulevard, only to find after dinner that an someone had pitched a brick through the car's rear window. So much for a fine dining experience. At a Warner Center hotel, a man went to retrieve his car from the valet, only to learn that his car had been purloined by a well-known TV actor who, when realizing his blunder, dumped the car on the freeway and fled on foot.